Every Man a King

Table of Contents
 
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
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 About the Author
 Also by Walter Mosley
 
 
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 The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author
 Copyright © 2023 by Thing Itself, Inc.
 Cover design by Gregg Kulick
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 Cover © 2023 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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 ISBN 9780316460194
 LCCN 2022943379
 E3-20230119-NF-DA-ORI
 
 
 
 
 
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 1.
 
 I drove my tiny cream-colored Bianchina up the FDR to Seventy-First, crossed the park, passing the Strawberry Fields memorial, and then made my way up West End a few blocks until turning left, finally arriving at an imposing gate in the Great Wall—the only entrance to a sprawling estate overlooking the West Side Highway and the Hudson.
 I stopped at the thick crisscrossed stainless steel bars and waited. Across a broad, two-hundred-foot-deep lawn could be seen the four-story white stone home. The structure itself occupied half a Manhattan city block.
 The owner of this impressive example of opulence was multibillionaire Roger Ferris, called King Silver by international society pages, jealous competitors, and those who liked catchy nicknames that had the ring of truth.
 The not-so-reclusive Ferris had moved out of Stonemason’s Rest Home to take up residence in the heavily guarded hall because he was in serious negotiations with his son and daughter over control of MDLT (Mains dans la Terre) Inc. Roger’s children, Alexander Ferris and Cassandra Ferris-Brathwaite, had filed suit claiming that their father was no longer competent, arguing that the board of directors of MDLT and the state of New York, among others, were legally bound to appoint them his trustees. If they were successful, they would become executor and executrix of an international conglomerate estimated to be worth north of eight hundred billion dollars.
 Sitting in my minuscule Italian car, I considered the siblings’ claim against their father. He was ninety-one years old, an advanced age for a captain of industry. The kids were both past retirement age themselves. The argument that he, Roger, was too feeble to run an international conglomerate made sense except for the fact that anyone who spent more than five minutes talking to the man knew that he was vibrant, vital, and vigilant. He played a mean game of chess, and before the recent pandemic and legal troubles, he still danced every day. I knew of his gamboling because his regular dance partner was my grandmother—Brenda Naples.
 Brenda was ninety-three, sharp as a whip, and black as a moonless night on an ancient sea. She met Roger at Stonemason’s and they quickly became three-quarters of an item.
 It was an unexpected coupling. Roger had been rich since the moment of his conception, whereas Brenda was born of sharecroppers, the issue of earlier sharecroppers, who were, in turn, born from three centuries of enslavement.
 
 
 
 “Hey, King,” intoned a voice I knew quite well.
 “Forth,” I replied, turning my head to gaze out the driver’s window at the huge white man who seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
 Forthright Jorgensen was six foot five with more muscle than most athletes. His hair was tawny and his eyes a color blue that almost seemed synthetic, it was so bright.
 Forthright’s father, Anders Jorgensen, was an anarcho-syndicalist who only believed in The Struggle; one might have said that this was his religion. Forthright became an old-school libertarian and started organizing unions. When he gave up on the American brand of labor coalitions, he published a notice in the Western Worker magazine saying, “I am abrogating my membership in the unions I belong to because of their inability to inspire political change and to fully eradicate sexism and racism from their ranks, and their failure to comprehend the underlying fascist tendencies of modern-day capitalism.”
 “You here to see Brenda?” Forth asked me.
 “She’s here today?”
 “Been all week.”
 “Well then, I’ll be happy to say hey.”
 “If it ain’t her, then what brings you up here?” Forth was close enough that he could give my small auto a cursory once-over. He was, after all, in charge of security for the mansion and everyone in it.
 “Roger said he wanted to see me about something. You know he won’t talk about anything serious over the phone.”
 The security guard lifted his head, looking at the sky, and said, “You get that?”
 He was talking into a microphone secreted somewhere on his person. There